Exporting validated shortcuts to CSV file

In a recent Citrix XenApp 7.x consulting engagement, the customer wanted to have a user’s start menu on their XenApp desktop populated entirely via shortcuts created dynamically at logon by Citrix Receiver. Receiver has a mechanism whereby a central store can be configured to be used for shortcuts such that when the user logs on, the shortcuts they are allowed are copied from this central share to their start menu. For more information on this see https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2015/01/06/shortcut-creation-for-locally-installed-apps-via-citrix-receiver/

Before not too long there were in excess of 100 shortcuts in this central store so to check these individually by examining their properties in explorer was rather tedious to say the least so I looked to automate it via good old PowerShell. As I already had logon scripts that were manipulating shortcuts, it was easy to adapt this code to enumerate the shortcuts in a given folder and then write the details to a csv file so it could easily be filtered in Excel to find shortcuts whose target didn’t exist although it will also output the details of these during the running of the script.

I then realised that the script could have more uses than just this, for instance to check start menus on desktop machines so decided to share it with the wider community.

The get-help cmdlet can be used to see all the options but in its simplest form, just specify a -folder argument to tell it where the parent folder for the shortcuts is and a -csv with the name of the csv file you want it to write (it will overwrite any existing file of that name so be careful).

It can also check that the shortcut’s target exists on a remote machine. For instance, you can run the script on a Citrix Delivery Controller but have it check the targets on a XenApp server, via its administrative shares, by using the -computername option.

If you run it on a XenApp server with the “PreferTemplateDirectory” registry value set, use the -registry option instead of -folder and it will read this value from the registry and use that folder.

If you’re running it on a desktop to check that there are no bad shortcuts in the user’s own start menu, whether it is redirected or not, or in the all users start menu then specify the options -startmenu or -allusers respectively.

Finally, it can email the resultant csv file via an SMTP mail server using the -mailserver and -recipients options.

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Author: guyrleech

I wrote my first (Basic) program in 1980, was a Unix developer after graduation from Manchester University and then became a consultant, initially with Citrix WinFrame, in 1995 and later into Terminal Server/Services and more recently virtualisation, being awarded the VMware vExpert status in 2009 and 2010. I have also had various stints in Technical Pre-Sales, Support and R&D.
I work as a Senior Technical Consultant for HCL, live in West Yorkshire, England; have a wife, three children and three dogs and am a keen competitive runner when not injured.
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